Yes, she's a fright! Graduated from Kindergarten and on her way to 1st grade after summer vacation. Here Squirt is with her missing front teeth! Yikes!
We're getting our green on over here and getting ready to ring in St. Pat's day with a blast. The whole family is going to be in the parade tomorrow and it's going to be a lot of fun. I'll take and post more pictures I promise.
It's been a busy weekend and it's still going strong. We spent Saturday working on the parade float and had a great time!
Welcome to another edition of Margie Unplugged where I babble on about whatever enters my mind without giving a thought to political correctness or if what I write down happens to make any sense whatsoever. Free writing is what I believe they call it.
The top thought in my mind this morning is that I have to go to the bathroom. Sorry about that, but I'm not going to get up and go running to the water closet just yet. Some of you may know I've been quite sick since before Thanksgiving. It was one thing, followed by another, yet another and I'm falling apart so it seems. The medications that I'm on - make me feel even sicker in a sense but I have to take them else drop dead or something. This one pill - makes me have to go to the bathroom all of the time. I've learned to hate it. To ignore it and not let it control me. Yet, it ends up winning each and every battle in the long run.
Next on my mind is making sandwiches and lunches for 56 kids. I still work for the tour company next door but at a less stressful level. In fact, it is stress free and at the same pay I was making before. Back during the planning of the Obama Inauguration trip I had about lost my mind with stress. Then fell ill. I guess I've come to the realization that I prefer employment to where I am given a job - then go on to do that job well and to completion so I can then get on with the rest of my life. Time clocks are terrible and so are 8 hour work days. I mean really - once a job is done why should I sit there staring at a clock? I hate that. It's wasting time, like sitting at the dozen traffic lights that it takes for me to go pick up a loaf of bread. It's just not in me anymore to work without a purpose or waste time anymore.
Last on my mind this morning is the pending debut of "ME" coming out of my closet. I'm not sure if I'm going to rush the gun and come out tomorrow evening or wait until Saturday morning. I'm nervous about that - but have made up my mind it has to be done. Either way, it will work out fine I'm sure.
Later last week I was watching a financial show that mentioned 1983, how we survived through that and how we'll survive through this also. I was a young teen then who made a lot of money each week simply by babysitting for others in our small town. That was until my Mom decided to take on a job behind my father's back to "spare his ego" and to help pay the bills.
That cut my hours for with two younger sisters Mom needed me to be there when they came home from school. Mom also needed me to cover for her by cleaning the house, hanging laundry and getting dinner started. This way, when Dad came home shortly after Mom would - he'd wouldn't know that she wasn't home all day. I could only babysit for others after dinner and the money made from this was used for my school lunches, clothes and other things. In fact - Mom even begged to borrow some of my money so my sisters could have lunch or go on a small field trip.
So Friday evening on CNBC they state that we all survived through this era. NOT!!
It's a fact that I never realized or knew until 3-4 years ago when I had to go up to NJ to help out my parents when Mom fell ill with Breast Cancer and Dad had a stroke. Both were under 60 years old and couldn't go to work during this time. It was a long wait for SSDI and there I sat with a load of bills in my lap.
They have a mortgage way over the value of their home. A home they purchased for $12,000 back in 1970. A second mortgage that was used to consolidate credit card debts a few years before. Unfortunately I also had to look into their life insurance policy and found that they had borrowed against this too.
Keep in mind there are no fancy cars, clothes or jewelry. Other than bowling my parents never went on vacation or out much. These debts were made to pay off debts. Money was borrowed to pay electric, food or medical bills. I'm afraid to say that over the past 20 years they had to have paid over a half a million dollars just in interest payments alone on debt.
Did we all survive that era? Not at all.
Here we are in another such era and I am burdened with a responsibility unlike anything I had ever planned for. I'm raising my own daughter, paying my own mortgage and putting food on my table - yet any day now, my parents could be driving up to my front door with a Uhaul truck.
I don't want them here. But who do I blame, them? The government? The banking institutions?
All in all, if a lesson is to be learned from 1983 it would be do not go into debt to pay off your debts. Save, pinch, cut coupons and costs. Take on a side job, cut up the credit cards, eat ramen noodles and shop for clothes at Goodwill. Anything. Look at your documents before you sign a car loan or mortgage. If you're going to be paying $60,000 in the long run for a $14,000 used car - buy a beat box with your down payment instead.
If we're going to survive this era - and not turn out homeless 30 years from now - we need credit and financial counselors outside of the banking institutions. We can be a government "of the people" if we band together and fight through this together.
